Kitchen Before & After: A Bedroom Becomes a New Kitchen for $6,000

What do you do if you have an "awful" old kitchen with a low popcorn ceiling and no surface space? If you're Kitchn reader Faith, you knock out a wall between the bedroom and dining room and build a new kitchen! In this budget $6,000 kitchen renovation, the bedroom became the kitchen and the old kitchen became a sitting room. (We assume another room in the house became the new bedroom!) Read more about the project below:

We kept our stove, sink, and refrigerator from the old kitchen. The countertops and cabinets are all IKEA and the open shelves, windowbox seat, and front of the bar is White Oak from my husband's childhood farm in West Virginia.

We removed the drop ceiling, placed bead-board between the beams, and painted it all white. This was a bigger headache than expected! The existing beams weren't even so each strip of bead-board had to be custom cut and the whole thing took over 12 hours. We kept the old closet from the bedroom and turned it into the pantry, leaving the door off for easy access.

The floor ended up being a huge hassle! When it was a bedroom it was a little step down to a carpeted floor. It took a lot of plywood to raise the floor and then some sanding down of the old floor to match them up.

The hardest decision was about what countertop to use. I was always in favor of butcherblock because of price and look but had concerns about using it around the sink. It hasn't been an issue and I absolutely love the warm look and ease of care!